welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour in a moment we'll be taking your calls in our new york take by take a live segment so you have something to say or ask give us a call at one plus one that's the united states two zero two nine zero four twenty one thirty four also all across america c.e.o.'s are telling their employees to vote for mitt romney or else it is that the only way corporate execs are trying to influence the vote of their workers and over the past several years it's become easier and easier to steal an election in america is there any way to stop the theft of our democracy or are we doomed to have more stolen elections i'll explain in tonight's billy take.

welcome to your take my take it live our phone lines are now open so if you want to share an opinion make a comment ask a question live on the air give us a call at two zero two nine zero four twenty one thirty four so for first call or the night paul in santa cruz a paul welcome to the program thanks for calling it. paul you are on the air. maybe paul is not here ok let's let's move along let's try gary in miami gary can you hear me. blow a very. it is a scary. this is paul this is paul ok great april so what's up yeah i live in santa cruz california that to see these billionaires and millionaires coming over to santa cruz in california just to the safe haven and i mean listen to me just recently just get involved with a special needs trust you know that basically there's so many layers to peel off

that you can't even get to these people paul i appreciate your perspective but i think that you're right increasingly what we're seeing in the united states is this kind of balkanization this this. the private neighborhood of of america and it's not it's not the direction that we should be going as a country we should be more all in this together gary in miami gary welcome to the program thanks for calling. gary are you are on the air live. on tom thank you for your show and also thank you for having me on the sprinkler on the on the schools is great work i want to ask you what your thoughts are about possibly. restructuring the parks code to favor cooperatives so that average workers would not have to give so much of their

own home their wages and well to. tears i think if there are any ideas that you have about that or anything out there in the discourse yes i appreciate your bringing this issue up because it's a it's a really big deal and in fact in my the most recent book that i publish is called thresholds of crisis western culture the last chapter is about a place called mon that are gone in spain the reason i went there spent a week and it's the largest co-op in the world it's a multi-billion dollar co-op the workers own the place and we were watching we were in this is somebody line where they're made washing machines and with our translator because they speak basque or spanish and there were four or five people down on the on the floor below us we were up on a kind of catwalk to see the factory and they were doing assembly of the panels that go on these washing machines or control panels and a fellow came by in a suit with a with a clipboard and stopped the line for a few minutes and had

a long conversation with them they all everybody participated in conversation then he left and so i said these are translator what's going on and he said well they're coming out with a new model of washing machine and so they were discussing how they're going to change the assembly line and my immediate thought was oh he was telling them what they're going to do and the translator then continued and said and so they were offering their suggestions on how to make it better and he was writing them down to take back to the to the engineering committee this is a company cooperative it's one hundred percent on by its employees we have these in the united states there are more people in the united states who work at and own co-ops than who are members of unions so that's a good credible possibility that we really need to be promoting ray in napa california a re what's on your mind today. hey tom how are you ok i got a question i would ask you all my friends since two thousand and one i'm in my early fifty's but nobody can answer this question when george bush took office in two thousand and one were public and bardi had what did they haven't had for seventy two years. i don't know what do they have they had control of all three

branches of government seventy two years if you take seventy two from two thousand one to get what you come up with one hundred twenty nine where they controlled the government for eight years before the great depression harding coolidge grandparents and my parents never forgot that they're dead now but they never forgot that and they made sure the republicans never ever controlled all three branches of government at one time. now they're in control of the american people just don't understand this crashing the economy is part of their game this isn't an accident. you're absolutely right you're sharing that with us and thank you for that i remember the i don't remember from living it but the election of forty six the republicans took the house of representatives the first time since the great depression for two years and then didn't get it again for for well over thirty years into the end of the clinton ministration when newt gingrich and his people remembered what the republicans have done to this country has been

a lot of amnesia and we need to we need to remind people the republican agenda marty in chicago hey marty what's on your mind tonight. thanks for taking my call on that one to get your thoughts and call attention to a story or n.p.r. station our local and air station has been bringing to light in regards to a contract that was signed with this company wexford health sources for one point four billion dollars to provide prison. care to prison and apparently have been sailing by just. speaking. stories. point four billion dollar contract with people and they weren't even on it and i'm just kind of curious how far is it going to stretch are we going to. local police and fire department well marty i absolutely should the point that you're making and you are right in fact there are libertarians now calling for the privatization of our fire departments we've had them on this program and we've debated them today on my radio show i debated

a conservative libertarian who was calling for the privatization of our roads turn all roads in our highways in the united states into toll roads and let bain capital on the mall and everything will be so much better right our private prisons are a mess and then your point is well made urban in temple texas say urban what's up. don't assume a great about you my my question is for you and the rest of the news media why nobody sized boxes covered up and as your story why they're not why the president stood up there and watched it live in real time and nobody to save them people's lives just that and now you stonewall most. of their lives what happened but i'll give you appreciate your passion about this and and you're right fox news is the only news organization that is saying that somehow the president knew that benghazi was a car even implying that you know the four guys were going to die in benghazi our ambassador had asked for more security in tripoli but had never mentioned benghazi

he was in benghazi and the. the question is i think you know was it possible that whoever funded that that mohammad movie did so because they wanted something like this to happen we still don't know who even funded that movie that's a question you will not hear raised on fox news instead they're trying to make it out like the president has some big secret to hide i think that the the a the reason why nobody else is taking no other news is taking it seriously because there's nothing to take seriously there it's a tragedy that involved the death of two security officers and two diplomats and it's just it's a tragedy paralyzes trying to turn it into political gain and i think that's just reprehensible hank in dural in philly you're on the air. good evening john i was wondering if anyone had ever done a study on the bush tax cuts. it's never been

a knack how much more money would be. against a deficit of the united states it's got to be billions of dollars that would have been earned by our government and. and that amount of time i was wondering if have you or anyone know that the center for american progress has published it on their think progress blog durley i very much appreciate you bringing up this topic because you're absolutely right it's a graphic that we often throw up on the screen that shows the composition of the deficit right now the republicans are all screaming about the deficit if you look at that deficit what you find is that about half of it a little a little less than half of that is the bush tax cuts another a little less than half of it is is the two wars that there were that george bush put on the credit card and medicare part d. word he said that the government can't go she had drug prices so medicare is paying twice as much for drug prices as the military does and then the remainder is the

word recession so tax collections are down and government outlays are up so you're absolutely right had we not had the bush tax cuts we wouldn't be in much of the mess we're in and in fact frankly if you want to go back to eighty four eighty five eighty six if we had had the reagan tax cuts we'd still have the prosperity that we had the fifty's sixty's seventy's and eighty's calvin in destin florida a calvin what's up. oh i have a saying where you discuss on the other thing is you know america is run like a bank money now well no it is common there for some reason on the spot system today just want to bring up taxes call the politician they like where i live it is their only real estate here just a mere allowed all the people in those shelters all real estate they just just refuse to raise taxes not on day but help communities to help the government move on with health care and help poor people can you help me with that calvin i appreciate bring this up because the point that you make is this study that i was talking with thomas frank about earlier which was some of the congressional research service which just does research for members of congress not for the

public and they were asked this question presumably by republican legislators when you cut taxes on rich people does it create more economic activity and it was an unambiguous no cutting taxes on rich people does no good whatsoever. and so the republicans said please take the study off the books take it back we don't we don't want to see the study it's nuts so this why say we need to roll back the reagan tax cuts hankin solver spring maryland a what's up. i heard you say that you were him radio operator i was i got my ticket when i was thirteen i got my general that well i got mine around fifteen or so in philadelphia and i never got my code speed up i was only five words a minute so i was a novice and attack did you know that you can now there's no more code and i went back out looked at the tests that are on the internet and went back and got my extra yeah i've got to do the same thing hank i however and i appreciate you

bringing this up it was a big hobby for me when i was a kid and i love code i can copy thirty words of men and i can still probably copy around. but a ham radio if you know a young person who is has any interest in electronics get him into ham radio there are local clubs all over the country that's in for your take my take alive thank you for all your calls and if we didn't get your call tonight christ back next week . after the break it's bad enough the c.e.o.'s are writing e-mails telling their employees who to vote for but now one corporation is taking political influence in the workplace a step further adele stanford all that will join us and tell you what one of the nation's largest privately owned corporations is doing to influence and their workers' votes. government no longer represents the. people we're going to take the term.

we. the or the. the way our economic system. the democrats. want. to. thank.

you. in screwed news over the last several weeks we've brought you numerous stories

about c.e.o.'s all the telling their employees to vote for mitt romney and even threatening to let workers go if president obama is reelected but now one company is taking their political influence over their employees a bit further by urging them to take a so-called civics course that contains right wing talking points and misinformation joining me to talk more about this is adele stan washington bureau chief at alter net dot welcome back to the program thanks for having me you know when when we first when this story first came out about companies the koch brothers sent out a letter to all their employees you know basically and the obvious win win of a company saying well if obama is reelected we're going to drop your insurance when really they want to drop their insurance and if they did you know and if obama didn't win them they could you know they made finesse of the reason i was saying the next step is going to be the same thing that we're seeing with the union busting where the employers say ok you guys get together everybody come together we're going to sit in this room for a day or two and somebody from from the union busting company is going to come in

and give a two day speech workshop on how unions are horrible only this time it's going to be about how democrats are horrible is that are we moving in that to where i think we're there so that's exactly what this is what what is what is menards and how does that play well menards you know for those of us who live on the coasts and we've never heard of them right they are actually the third largest home improvement retail chain in the united states one of the largest as you said privately owned corporations in united states they employ forty thousand people with a two hundred seventy stores in the midwest and they're constantly expanding so you know chances are if you are you know doing your basement over in your house you're just as likely and you live in wisconsin or you live in illinois you're just as likely to get your materials that menards is a home depot so. first of all so you got that it's a big outfit and then in there virally anti-union i mean you can even get hired by menards if you were in high school and worked in

a unionized grocery store. you might be tainted they might have gotten over it and so also the way because they are so exploitive they don't want to train their employees on paid company time so they do all of these at home and you know in home training online courses if you want to know you know how the products in your department work you're encouraged to take these voluntary in home trainings so one of them suddenly offered right in time for the presidential campaign is a civics one are one literally that's because it's full civics one o one the national self will governing course in home training course. i understand there's a koch brothers connection to the yeah well when i looked at this you know last year we talked about an exposé alternate did with the nation institute we think

investigative fund where we looked at this program called prosperity one o one which was started by mark locke remember we talked about him the mysterious smoking man of the herman cain campaign who used to run americans for prosperity wisconsin chapter it's rick prosperity flooded by the koch brothers yes funded by david koch founded by david koch so this guy has this prosperity want to one thing which is a for profit entity and. then created by linda hansen his sidekick and all of a sudden i'm looking at this menards thing. you know where i tamed and it's the same material. it's the same material a chunk of it is. a chunk of it be entitled. labor chunk of it the anti cap and trade part of it that this that's the exact same material i features stephen moore of the wall street journal editorial board has collected hundreds of thousands of

dollars and speaking so these from the americans for prosperity foundation captivated numerous times on this program. so there you go that's what you've got me in. just to grow in the meantime mayor bloomberg has come out of doors to obama and bloomberg news is their business publication it's the climate change yes it's which is extraordinary i mean you know i was starving it's global warming stupid actually here's the graph oh well it's great you know i was talking with some journos earlier and they were like well of course he was going to endorse obama and i'm like hey it's the climate change message that's really really significant in this indorsement and i mean i don't know how well it is if people are getting it i mean you know i i'm i'm sort of there with thomas frank where i'm not so sure that facts matter and him for and i hope i'm wrong but i

think the day will come one when they do which is you know it's hopefully in time or do you expect this menards civics want to one class to be i'm assuming there's going to be picked up by other companies i don't know that it hasn't already been i mean the prosperity one on one program that was done in time for the two thousand and ten midterm elections and that was used by a number of privately owned companies in wisconsin so i don't know that they haven't been doing this same thing and you just have a lot of them yeah i mean this is just something that you know i got lucky on your credit stand thanks so much thanks so much for your great investigative work and reporting that you're doing it for being with us thanks so much for having me.

back in two thousand republican election officials in florida led by then governor jeb bush and secretary of state katherine harris kicked nearly sixty thousand mostly african-american voters off the rolls just ahead of the election they said these people who comprise three percent of the entire african-american electorate in florida had been convicted of felonies and were therefore ineligible to vote turns out though that was mostly a lie the list based on a texas felon list led to tens of thousands of completely eligible african-american floridian voters with names similar to texas felons being denied the right to vote thanks to republicans throwing all these mostly democratic leaning voters off the voter rolls the election stayed close enough in florida to allow the supreme court to basically steal it and handed off to george w. bush. fast forward four years later to ohio their republican secretary of state kenneth blackwell a longtime g.o.p. operative who at the time was also an electoral advisor to bush during the two

thousand recount purged three hundred thousand voters in his state off the rolls just ahead of the election against john kerry like the purge list in florida four years earlier the ohio list was filled with errors too and as robert f. kennedy jr points out thousands of eligible voters were kicked off the voting rolls simply because they didn't vote in the previous election and most of those disenfranchised voters surprise surprise were democrats in cleveland they had voted five to one for kerry and fort four and one in four voters were purged from voting was alone in one specific precinct in cleveland the turnout was only seven percent the lowest in the state thanks to this voter purge the house judiciary committee report on the two thousand and four ohio election found that the purging quote likely disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters statewide once again close

enough to swing a close election to bush in two thousand and four thanks to our bizarre electoral college voting system if one political party wants to steal the election they don't need to deploy teams all around the country to staff stuff ballot boxes intimidate voters or regular trotting voting machines they just need to set up shop in one or two or three or four of those swing states like florida ohio pick a couple thousand or tens of thousands of voters off the rolls disqualify you out by a few more thousands of voters on election day by giving them wrong information maybe toggle a few electronic voting machines and voila the election is taken care of two out of the last three elections have been determined in this way and it appears this election will be heavily influenced by voter purges as well. as opposed to pollster nate silver with the new york times' five thirty eight blog projects there's a fifty fifty chance ohio will determine who the next president is just like in two thousand and four q the new republican secretary of state john who has been working

hard to restrict ohio voters access to the polls hundreds of thousands of ohioans particularly minorities took advantage of early voting in two thousand and eight to elect a president obama so the attorney general in ohio cut down on those early voting hours and now the courts have given him a new tool to restrict the vote on wednesday a panel of three conservative justices all appointed by george w. bush or his dad ruled in favor of the secretary of state of ohio paving the way for massive voter disenfranchisement but it's kicking people off the voting rolls in that key swing state court of the ruling voters who are told by poll workers to vote at the wrong precinct and then do so lose their right to have those their votes counted a previous court ruling had ordered the voters who were misled by poll workers still have the right to have the road counted but that's now been overturned we

already know the romney campaign has sent out flyers to prospective ballot watchers in wisconsin telling them to give misleading information to tell voters now thanks to this court ruling the romney campaign can legally have its poll watchers in ohio send voters to the wrong polling places and so their votes won't be counted. for the second time in three elections ohio could be stolen right in front of our eyes or the theft might happen in florida again just like in two thousand republican election officials are again purging tens of thousands of voters in the rolls as the miami herald reported on these purge lists hispanic democratic and independent minded voters are the most likely to be targeted whites and republicans are disproportionately the least likely to face the threat of removal on top of that already discrepancies are being reported with early vote tallies and florida's electronic voting machines in one florida voting precinct more than

a thousand early votes were of the wast or miscounted considering that george w. bush officially won the state by five hundred thirty eight votes these discrepancies could mean the difference in the election a close national election like everyone is expecting this year translates to an even closer election in the states are all it will take is a few thousand voters to flip election it is way too easy to steal an election in the united states of america our electoral college is for just one or two states to swing a presidential election every year the privatisation of the vote with electronic voting machines has handed over the being heart of our democracy the vote to corporate interests who then handle it in secret and the lack of an explicit federal right to vote for all eligible americans as made voter suppression efforts much easier and harder to prosecute or prevent. we must fundamentally change how

we elect our president and who gets to vote in that election until we do this we claim can't claim to have a democratic republic that the rest of the world should emulate we just have a dysfunctional system that the plutocrats can steal and more closely resembles an oligarchy than a republic. and that's the way it is tonight wednesday november first two thousand and twelve for more information check out our website to thom hartmann dot com free speech dot org r t dot com and who dot com slash the big picture and forget democracy begins with you get out there get active vote tag your.

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